IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020 - 37

replaced step by step by human reasoning as the new authority of
judgement. The Enlightenment consisted of currents of rationalism
(Descartes), empiricism (Hume,
Locke), encyclopaedism (Diderot),
and universalism (Kant), and created basic foundations for the idea of
human rights, science, rule of law,
and democracy. The self-image of
humans changed in the transition
towards the Era of Enlightenment,
as they were then understood to be
rational (Kant), autonomous (Descartes, Locke), and communicative
(Habermas) subjects with natural
rights (Kant, Rousseau). These
essential ingredients of the Enlightenment should be preserved in the
epoch of digital change to avoid the
re-emergence of a "self-imposed
immaturity," now not driven by
Absolutism and religious beliefs, but
by technological systems with the
potential to undermine the basic
structures of privacy, freedom,
democracy, and autonomy. We must
consider the following questions [6]:
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pocratic Oath for medical professionals make sense for the
AI community?
These questions are even more
important, as democracy is currently
not only under pressure from digital
disruptions, challenging some fundamentals of democracy, and from
some digital protagonists, questioning the eloquence of democratic procedures vis a vis AI driven technical
systems [8]. In parallel democracy
is also undermined by right wing,
authoritarian, populist movements,
and gover nment s - often using
digital tools for their purposes. Putting democracy, privacy, and human
dignity first, and thinking about
digital innovations as instruments,
supporting the basic normative values of open, democratic societies,
is therefore of high importance in
these turbulent times.

The Blind Spots of Enlightenment -
Being Cured by Sustainability
Thinking
A further developed humanism for
the 21st century would give us the
chance to examine the blind spots of
the Enlightenment Era. Four factors
are of relevance in this regard [6].
Firstly, the protagonists of the
Enlightenment focused with good
arguments on "reasoning," instead
of "irrationality" as a basic foundation of societies. In the 21st century
we should combine the power of
reasoning and cognitive capabilities
with the power of social intelligence
of humans [9]-[11].
Secondly, the protagonists of the
Enlightenment focused with good
reasons on the rights of individuals
against the background of absolutism. In the 21st Century, we cannot
ignore that a culture of individualism
needs to be embedded into a culture of the common good [12], [13],
recognizing that the freedom and
creativity of individuals depends on

How can human "maturity" and
democratic voting processes be
preserved in the context of
automated decision makingprocesses?
How can processes of deliberation
in societies be protected in view of
massive increases in knowledge,
opinions, fake news?
How can freedom, equality, and
privacy be protected for all people in digital and virtual spaces?
How can the sovereignty of people and rule of law be protected
against digital surveillance?
How can the basic values of the
Enlightenment be built into algorithms and ML systems?
How could AI experts and producers of algorithms be trained
to consider the normative pillars
of democratic societies? Could a
functional equivalent to the HipJUNE 2020

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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

societal structures and social networking. Humans are social beings -
we become individuals, because we
interact with others [11], [14]. Societies are more than only the sum of
many individuals [15]-[17].
Thirdly, protagonists of the En--
lightenment argued, with good
reasons, that humans needed to
emancipate themselves from nature,
in an era in which the dynamics of
nature (droughts, extreme weather
events, fire) threatened (the survival
of) human communities. In the 21st
century, the era of the Anthropocene [18], humans need to understand that human existence is
coupled with the complex systems
of the biosphere. Meeting the needs
of 10 billion people in 2050, while
protecting the globally interconnected ecosystems within the planetary boundaries [19], in order to
avoid dangerous tipping points
in the Earth System [20], is one
of the most urgent challenges for
human societies.
Finally, protagonists of the En--
lightenment invented the idea of universalism and equal rights (human
rights) for all. This was a fundamental "moral revolution" [21] in an era
still being shaped by colonialism
and slavery. In the 21st century, the
epoch of global interconnectivity,
we are learning that universalism
needs to be embedded in vital local
cultures and institutions. A locally
rooted universalism or cosmopolitanism [22] might be a concept for
a globalized world, being composed
of highly interconnected local spaces - increasingly intertwined with
multiple virtual spaces.
It is interesting to observe that
these blind spots from the Enlightenment Era are key elements of the
sustainability discourses of the last
40 years: balancing rationality and
the power of social intelligence,
combining individual rights and the
idea of commons, -s trengthening

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020

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